#017 What is a Gifted Assessment? & other Quirks of Giftedness

Sophia Elliott: [00:05:38] Oh, no, it’s a very complex, there’s a complexity built into this. Yeah. It’s not for the faint-hearted, but that’s why we have people like you helping us. us parents.

Amanda Drury: [00:05:50] Another thing I can do, some parents will come to me because their child is gifted.

They haven’t had any other assessments done, but their WISC come back with scores all over the place. So they’re looking for. Where do I go next? Because it’s a very expensive venture to go out and get other assessments done on your child. And when they expect that, when it’s expected that when they think their child might have something else going on they don’t want to spend a thousand dollars on it to find out that was a wasted thousand dollars.

So the WISC assessment actually gives you a lot of pointers and can. I mean, it can’t definitively tell me whether they’ve got ADHD or dyslexia or autism, but it can point to those. It can say, well, because they got this score or this variation in scores, it is possible that they’ve got an ADHD going on.

Sophia Elliott: [00:06:51] let’s talk about some of those. So earlier we were talking about working memory and processing speed, how sometimes one can be higher than the other, because they are often compensate for each other. Is that right?

Amanda Drury: [00:07:07] Yes. Yeah. In in a twice exceptional child, those two actually have the most discrepancy usually.

Sophia Elliott: [00:07:14] Working memory is that part of our brain. And if you, if we’re working on, let’s say a maths equation, it’s remembering the numbers that we were using a minute ago and bringing that back into an equation, or if way reading is remembering what we just read the sentence before and bringing that back into what we’re doing processing speed is How quickly our brain processes really

Amanda Drury: [00:07:43] Yes. How how quickly information goes from one part of your brain to the other. And. I guess turns into the information needed to, I don’t verbally speak a sentence or or write a piece of writing.

Sophia Elliott: [00:07:56] yeah. So knowing how our children’s score in these areas can help us understand them. So for example, Processing speed. If we know a child’s got a really quick processing speed, then they’re just going to go zap and there’ll be onto it. But we know if they’ve scored lower in this area, it might be some, an area that they need accommodating for, or support in?

Amanda Drury: [00:08:18] Yeah, that,

that is right. Sometimes children get, this is actually particularly common and twice exceptional children.

There’s quite a bit of research literature on this. The short term memory and the processing speeds can be quite far apart and they can have very fast processing, but very slow, short term. Memory or very low short-term memory. So while they’re able to process the information really well, they’re not able to hold it for long or sometimes maybe it won’t get put into their long-term memory. And it can go the other way too, where the processing speed is very low, but the short term memory is very high.

Sophia Elliott: [00:09:00] So they’re just two components of the subsections and five. What were the five again?

Amanda Drury: [00:09:07] We’ve got verbal comprehension, which deals with essentially language. It has two tests.

One is a vocabulary test which looks at different, or it basically goes through a number of words. Which the child then needs to decipher and meaning, but each of the words on the test and the other test is I think it’s a memory test around comprehension, but it, it mainly assesses just verbal ability to speak. Which often get to children are quite well ahead and

Sophia Elliott: [00:09:44] Yes. I can vouch for gifted children being able lot and talk under water.

Amanda Drury: [00:09:49] and the ability to understand it

Sophia Elliott: [00:09:51] That’s right. Yes. Very sophisticated vocabularies is I will always remember my youngest at age two using the word literally in the correct way. Like any, he would, you know, he would say something, he’d be like, literally, you know, and I’d be like, you’re two and you’re using that correctly.

And every time he said it, I would be like, Is he using that correctly? And I’m like, damn he is. So what were the other areas we’ve talked about? Verbal comprehension processing speed and working is there’s two more

Amanda Drury: [00:10:27] There’s visual, spatial, visual spatial, commonly in particularly in children with dyslexia or ADHD tend to have very high scores in your visual.

Sophia Elliott: [00:10:39] Oh, okay. And the final one

Amanda Drury: [00:10:42] There’s fluid reasoning, which is that mainly tests looking out outside the square kind of stuff, being able to answer kind of.

Philosophical questions, being able to

Sophia Elliott: [00:10:56] sort of Yeah. Yep.

Amanda Drury: [00:10:58] And then your working memory in your process. Yeah.

Sophia Elliott: [00:11:02] so we can interpret those scores in different ways that can give us an insight into. An exceptionality or a potential exceptionality. So as you said before, was it dyslexic? Kids can often have high visual spatial scores. So there are some trends that you look out for when you’re interpreting an assessment.

Amanda Drury: [00:11:26] Yeah. Typically ADHD and dyslexia comes out higher on your visual, spatial scores than your other scores. Also the usually the, well, often the Processing and the working memories will be very, very big difference.

Eight or nine scale points difference between the two with an ADHD child or a autistic child, but I’m not a psychologist. And I must stress this. Isn’t always the case. This is just a trend that has come up in the research literature. So. It’s really important that people don’t take the WISC and literally think Oh my child’s ADHD, because of this, it’s simply a trend that’s come up and worth investigating further.

You can’t just assume.

Sophia Elliott: [00:12:21] Absolutely. And when you’re working with parents, you’re talking to them about their child. You’re looking at other reports they may have had, you’re talking about different concerns that they’ve had every conversation as for every child is very individualized and we need to important that it’s important.

And it’s also, I think one of the things about giftedness is every kid is different. So we’ve got to take that Take that into consideration when we’re were talking about, trends and generalizing things. Absolutely. So in the work that you do and supporting parents, I can definitely see, very useful role in pulling reports together, having a close look and being able to interpret that in an easy way for teachers.

Tell me about some of the experiences you’ve had during that work.

Amanda Drury: [00:13:18] So far very positive. I’ve had some very positive feedback from the parents I’ve worked with. I have worked directly with some schools as well, and they have been very appreciative of having the report all in one place.  Very thankful

Sophia Elliott: [00:13:34] Especially, I’m imagining you’re looking at it also from a teacher’s perspective. So you’re talking their language as well.

Amanda Drury: [00:13:41] That’s right. The parents will somehow one parent in particular investigated further on the ADHD lines after I told them that it might be worth investigating and did actually find the

Sophia Elliott: [00:13:55] clues there

Amanda Drury: [00:13:56] That they were ADHD.

However Like I said before these conditions, particularly the likes of autism and ADHD, they’re very complex condition. And I always say to my parents, it’s really important that you get that investigated further, that you don’t just think, Oh, I’m going to treat this child like a person with ADHD now.

Yes. Because it’s a very complex thing and that’s not my area.

Sophia Elliott: [00:14:23] Absolutely. And each of these exceptionalities have their own assessment that looks at that and is going to give you additional information as well. So,

Amanda Drury: [00:14:38] and autism particularly looks very different from child to child. They say, when you meet one child with autism, you’ve met one child with autism.

Sophia Elliott: [00:14:49] says lot Doesn’t it expresses that

Amanda Drury: [00:14:53] It is very different from child to child

Sophia Elliott: [00:14:55] and it’s also very different as well from gender to gender and girls express autism very differently Yeah. Do you see that in other exceptionalities?

Amanda Drury: [00:15:07] Yes. You do. ADHD is very different in girls to boys.

Often there, the research points to ADHD being more commonly when it is found in girls. Often it isn’t, but when it is it’s more commonly the inattentive type. Whereas in boys it’s more commonly the hyperactive type, but that’s a very general, it’s not all the time. It was not the case all the time.

It’s just more common. Commonly goes there.

Sophia Elliott: [00:15:34] Have you ever seen any research around giftedness being expressed differently between boys and girls?

Amanda Drury: [00:15:40] I haven’t.

Sophia Elliott: [00:15:41] Yeah, it’s something

Amanda Drury: [00:15:42] a gender perspective. No.

Sophia Elliott: [00:15:44] I wonder about that. And because anecdotally, I wonder if there’s perception that gifted boys more easily fit into the Misbehavior category and gifted girls fit into that I’m gonna conform and people please but I’ve not seen any research around that area yet It’s just personal curiosity know that there can be gender differences Let’s talk a little bit about your research I know that part of your research was in. Identifying some red flags for teachers, things that they could look out for within their classroom.

Amanda Drury: [00:16:31] Yeah. The idea behind my research was to, I don’t like to put children in boxes, but. One of the things that comes up again and again, throughout the research literature is the concept of masking and twice exceptional children, more often than not not found in the general classroom because of masking.

Masking is when the disability masks that giftedness or the giftedness mask, the disability. So one co one basically counts the other out. And then so. A teacher who doesn’t have any training in these areas. Many teachers don’t even have training in giftedness, let alone anything else.

Sophia Elliott: [00:17:17] Yeah.

Amanda Drury: [00:17:17] Won’t, won’t see it.

So my idea was I was going to go through the literature. I had to do a systematic literature review for my master’s research. And so I sifted that literature to find. Things that commonly come up in children who are twice exceptional across the board. And like, for example, one of the things that came up in many areas, there was dyslexia.

There was autism ADHD. All three of those areas was the processing score versus the short term memory score on the WISC assessment. Much being hugely different, three different studies looked at that. And there was another thing that came up is mental health came up a lot as well. That kind of dysfunctional perfectionism that is common in giftedness anyway, but can be more pronounced exceptional children by

Sophia Elliott: [00:18:16] dysfunctional perfectionism. Do you mean perfectionism? That kind of goes too far and becomes a barrier to engaging and trying things out.

Amanda Drury: [00:18:27] There are two types of perfectionism. There’s actually a healthy perfectionism. That is actually really good because it, it drives us

Sophia Elliott: [00:18:35] strive. Yeah. We strive to Yeah

Amanda Drury: [00:18:38] terms and striving to do better.

But dysfunctional perfectionism is that kind of fixed mindset of. If I make a mistake, I’m not going to be successful. And you can imagine twice exceptional children make a few more mistakes than your average gifted child because of their learning blocks. So dysfunctional perfectionism comes up a lot in twice exceptional children that, that essentially that refusal to do any work because you’re too scared to fail.

Sophia Elliott: [00:19:12] yeah, absolutely. Which can be crippling. So you researched focused a lot around. The masking to help teachers identify red flags and masking. You talked about how one can compensate for the other. So if a gifted child is also dyslexic, their strengths in their giftedness is helping them to compensate for theirsay, dyslexia or whatever their exceptionality is, which makes the dyslexia harder to see because.

You know, they’re they do they’re on their strengths and which makes them more difficult to identify within the classroom

Amanda Drury: [00:19:55] And I can use my son as an example for that again, his dyslexia. Wasn’t found initially, because he was memorizing the shapes of the words.

Sophia Elliott: [00:20:06] all right. Had a great memory and he, yeah, he’s like,

Amanda Drury: [00:20:09] That’s what his dyslexia specialist told me. He had no phonemic awareness at all. Yet. He was reading novels. When I asked her, how is he reading novels he can’t, when he can’t phonetically spell The, or read properly, they break up words.

She said, because he’s remembering the shape of the Word. He’s remembering them as pictures

Sophia Elliott: [00:20:30] because gifted kids are great problem solvers aren’t they? And they it’s the work arounds that become really interesting. That’s phenomenal. That’s. Really that’s really good. And he’s got a great memory.

Amanda Drury: [00:20:44] He had a lot of trouble in high school though. Initially, because those longer words you get in textbooks, he, his little trick wasn’t working. Yeah.

Sophia Elliott: [00:20:53] yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So,

Amanda Drury: [00:20:58] With the masking, there’s actually three different types of masking.

Sophia Elliott: [00:21:02] Oh, tell us those. Yeah.

Amanda Drury: [00:21:04] The first one we’ve already talked about, which is the disability versus giftedness, and then there’s the dumbing it down, which is actually common in all gifted children, especially in Australia.

Cause unfortunately Australia has w many Australians. Schools have this kind of tall poppy syndrome problem is actually research on it. And now due to the ridicule from ridicule, from their peers and teachers they dumb it down because they don’t want to appearit smart.

Sophia Elliott: [00:21:36] that’s right. It’s not cool to be smart.

Amanda Drury: [00:21:38] putting a mask  over their intelligence.

Sophia Elliott: [00:21:41] Yeah, absolutely.

Amanda Drury: [00:21:43] And then there’s the The other one is mental health looking at invisible mental health issues. So they might be distressed or ashamed of their anxiety or their depression, or maybe they’re scared of it.

Maybe they don’t understand what it is. So they will spend the whole day masking their anxiety putting up. A persona. Normally they’ll put up some sort of persona along the lines, be very creative from a gifted point of view and make a persona over the top of their anxiety because they don’t want anyone to know that they’re anxious.

And then they go home and they completely lose it And it’s bad it’s back to back meltdowns for the whole afternoon for poor mum and dad and family because

Sophia Elliott: [00:22:33] had to use all their energy all day to hold it the mask on And yeah they get to their safe environment They just they’re releasing I’ve heard the example of the the shaken Coke bottle So day the Coke bottle is getting shook, but the lidis on.

And as soon as they get home in their safe, that lid comes off.

Amanda Drury: [00:22:58] That’s right.

Sophia Elliott: [00:22:59] Yeah. And

Amanda Drury: [00:23:00] often now I don’t want to appear different.

Sophia Elliott: [00:23:03] no, of course we we? Yeah.

Amanda Drury: [00:23:06] They know that if they do lose it at school, they’re gonna be tired based about it.

Sophia Elliott: [00:23:10] Yeah, absolutely.

Amanda Drury: [00:23:11] And usually this kind of masking begins typically from about year two onwards, because this is the time when they’ve become really aware of what other people are thinking about.

Sophia Elliott: [00:23:24] Yep. Yeah. So that’s a good red flag for parents. If the school is saying, and I’ve actually been in that situation, the school was saying, no, Child’s perfect at school, no problems here and at home, I’m like, this is seriously not perfect. There’s lot of melting meltdowns and frustration yeah. All sorts going on.

So

Amanda Drury: [00:23:47] and to clarify for those that. I don’t know what a meltdown is. It’s essentially where their emotions have become so intense that their whole body is reeling with that tension and they need to release it.

And that’s done through what essentially looks like a really bad temper tantrum, but it’s not a temper tantrum. It is a complete loss of control of their emotions. Are they? Because. It’s really scary for them.

Sophia Elliott: [00:24:18] Yeah,

Amanda Drury: [00:24:19] scary

Sophia Elliott: [00:24:20] It’s a total disregulation. Isn’t it? Yeah, and I think that’s a really important distinction. It’s not a temper tantrum. It’s so much more than then I’m not getting my way and I’m going to be upset about it. Yeah. It’s a very big thing.

Amanda Drury: [00:24:36] And it can be the smallest thing that sets them off because they’ve been masking all day at school, you come home and maybe they wanted a Vegemite sandwich and there’s no Vegemite left in the cupboard or something.

It’s something really, usually something really inane Or they needed to take their shoes off at the door. And you feel like, how can my child have this huge tantrum over this tiny, tiny thing, but it’s not, it’s a buildup. It’s like the the tipping point, the last straw.

Sophia Elliott: [00:25:05] Yeah, absolutely. Just that straw that broke the camel’s just this tiny little thing but yeah The lid of that Coke bottle just comes they just they can’t hold on any longer it’s really intense gifted kids twice exceptional kids They’re really intense I liked the definition you’re sharing with me the other day about how they’re just more You know they’re just more intense They feel more learning more quickly. There’s just this little people and it’s just more, I just thought that was a great way of explaining them.

Amanda Drury: [00:25:41] more everything and they notice more. Which can actually add to their problems if they’re ADHD or autistic.

Because they’re already struggling from a sensory point of view in a very busy environment. And then their giftedness allows them to notice every tiny little detail of everything that’s going on. It’s just a bombardment on their senses and it doesn’t, it really doesn’t help their autism or their, or their ADHD, which, which is.

Sensory processing issues are common with those two.

Sophia Elliott: [00:26:18] Absolutely. And so in your work parents and students It’s really interesting that you’ve been able to assist them in helping to interpret report data that they’re given and and be that bridge between parents and teachers to help teachers be in a place where they can support these children quickly and easily By being given that information I can see that that’s like a dream for parents and teachers to get that, that service. And I think that it’s really interesting that you’re talking about your research in terms of helping teachers to identify some of those red flags that can help us then start to spot these kids who are going under the radar in classrooms.

Amanda Drury: [00:27:08] Another one that’s very common is the asymmetry, which you get with giftedness anyway, but with a twice exceptional child if you find that a student in your classroom has very scattered grades, they in this subject, a D in that subject, a B in that subject, it’s all over the shop. That’s usually a good indicator that something’s going on.

Sophia Elliott: [00:27:33] so lately and again, we’ve talked about this before. It’s that opportunity to not just focus on the deficit. Not just focusing and looking at where they’re getting the D but also questioning the whole picture and the fact that they’re getting, you know, DS and A’s, there’s, there’s something more than just a simple deficit going on here, you know, potentially that giftedness is in the mix as well as a learning challenge in a particular area.

Amanda Drury: [00:28:00] That’s right. And also if you get the child in your class who was doing really well in other classes, and then they come into your class and they’re just bluntly refusing to do any work for you. I’m thinking like a child that may have been getting A’s in maths and they come to your class and they’re not getting.

I can’t even do the work for you that just refusing it could be that you’re not giving them hard enough work. And sometimes teachers some teachers have this attitude of, well, they have to sh they have to prove to me that they can do it before I give them harder work. And I would suggest always in that instance, talk to the teacher that came before you and see,

Sophia Elliott: [00:28:41] See

Amanda Drury: [00:28:43] Because collaboration is really important.

Sophia Elliott: [00:28:45] Absolutely. And unfortunately do hear that quite a bit. The idea that gifted programs or harder work that enrichment or acceleration needs to be a reward when. In fact, if kids are refusing to engage or perhaps misbehaving, it’s actually maybe a real sign of extreme boredom and disengagement because they desperately need that harder work and it shouldn’t be held off as a reward.

It just needs to be a part of their learning plan or

a part of the way that they’re allowed to learn and be taught.

Amanda Drury: [00:29:23] Yeah. Yeah. And no, another one twice exceptional children, some of them don’t test well either. So if you’re using a standard.

Test for the whole class, just to see where everybody’s working at, that won’t necessarily give you the correct result for a twice exceptional child.

Sophia Elliott: [00:29:42] we talked earlier about how, for example, an ADHD child might need a quiet space to focus, to get the best results. Which

and accommodation takes a bit more effort for a teacher, but sometimes we just need to go that extra mile for a student to see, help them be in a situation where they can do their best.

Amanda Drury: [00:30:06] or a dyslexic child might need access to a laptop, which isn’t connected to the internet so that they can’t just spell, check everything.

Sophia Elliott: [00:30:15] Yeah. right.

Amanda Drury: [00:30:16] But yeah, because it can make it easier for them to access to text, especially dysgraphia.

Because they will be able to usually type faster. Then hand, write

Sophia Elliott: [00:30:28] Thank very much. They’re all really interesting insights. And I think it’s really important for us to understand the challenges that gifted children can have that gifted children. Aren’t just children who. Who breeze through life. On the contrary, they have their own gifted challenges, as well as being children who also have challenges where they’re twice exceptional.

So the, the research that you’re doing and the support that you’re providing for parents is really important to help us share that knowledge and understand these students better so that they can reach their potential. And. And find their confidence and happiness. It helps them reach their potential as well.

Amanda Drury: [00:31:14] Yeah. And to help parents not fall into the gutter of  mental illness as well, because they’re watching their children fail. It’s it’s a horrible thing that can happen. And so if, if I can help a parent advocate for their child and that child succeeds, then I’ve made a difference, you know, and I’ve helped that family move on in life and help those parents be happier.

I I’m happy.

Sophia Elliott: [00:31:42] And and that is a whole other podcast that we need to do is about about us as parents you’ve absolutely hit the nail on the head Yeah It’s very difficult for us to watch our children with those challenges And and yeah this support and these conversations are crucially important to helping a whole bunch of kids who are under the radar and parents who just don’t know what’s going on They haven’t you know it’s hard to figure this stuff out as a parent let alone teachers and other experts and professionals who may or may not have training in various areas as parents we don’t get the on know what is gifted What these exceptionalities? It’s really tricky to figure this stuff out.

So thank you so much for the support that you offer and for coming in today and talking to us about these issues really appreciate it.

Amanda Drury: [00:32:35] Thank you.